From Defense to Need

What does it take to find access to our needs again?

In recent posts, I’ve described how needs become coupled with pain and what protective strategies we develop to cope as best we can with difficult relational experiences and life circumstances.

Over the coming weeks, I want to explore what we can do to find our way back to our needs.

Today I’ll offer a first overview, an orientation of what can happen in coaching and what people can do on their own. In the posts that follow, I’ll go deeper into specific aspects that feel particularly important to me.

◽️ In coaching: Various movements that interweave ◽️

In my work with clients, it’s about movements that don’t unfold linearly but rather condition one another. Common themes include:

~ Exploring what is need and what is defense: The distinction is often not obvious, especially when patterns have been cemented for decades.

~ Differentiation: Between then and now. Between need and avoidance. Between passive receiving and active expression, not “getting recognition” but “wanting to show oneself.”

~ Understanding and honoring the protective function: The defense was a wise solution. Once that achievement is acknowledged, the avoidance can be asked to step aside, to make room for the need.

~ Exploring the need itself: Sensing into the need, what wants to show itself? What expansive quality emerges when we allow it, and how do I then sense the avoidance?

~ Also trying small experiments: Testing in protected spaces what happens when the need is given more room.

◽️ What people can do on their own ◽️

Even without professional support, there are pathways:

~ Noticing contradictions between what we say (“I don’t need that”) and what we feel (emptiness, restlessness, ruminating at night)

~ Taking body signals seriously as pointers to warded-off needs

~ Daring small, safe experiments in contexts that feel secure

~ Learning to distinguish between genuine needs (which tend to feel alive) and defense (which tends to feel controlled)

~ Patience with yourself. Needs that have been coupled with pain for decades don’t open up overnight

This is not an exhaustive list. What I’ve described as coaching approaches can of course also be tried on your own. In the coming weeks, I want to dedicate myself to these and possibly other approaches.